sleepless in minoo (or urusai!)

My neighbors are awful. They like to fight at 2 in the morning. With my ear on my pillow I can hear EVERY word that my neighbors on the 2nd floor are screaming, and every door they are slamming. I'm amazed at how much sound carries in a cement building. The way sound bounces off the other building around us, it sounds like they are fighting right out on our lanai. Why don't the police come? The police here don't seem too powerful like the ones in the U.S. (or maybe the ones in the U.S. are too powerful?) Guess I'll try to take a nap now, everything seems to have calmed down...Hope no one got hurt.

sa-shi-su-se-so

Well, the rain has stopped and the sun is shining. Can you believe there is another election going on? My rant about this topic, which I posted about previously is here. Now, I'm not too familiar with their election system here, but it is driving me a bit batty. At least the election is tomorrow, so hopefully all this noise will stop for another 3 or 4 months...sigh...

Changing the subject...Do you want to learn how to cook Japanese food well? If so, you might want to try to remember this acronym of sorts : sa-shi-su-se-so.

1. Sa = sato (sugar)

2. Shi = shio (salt)

3. Su = su (vinegar)

4. Se = shoyu (soy sauce)

5. So = miso (soy bean paste)

The order in which these seasonings are added to dishes is crucial in Japanese cooking. They are listed in order of light to strong flavors. For example, if you put shoyu or miso in the pot first, it will be harder to bring out other flavors because the shoyu and miso have quite a strong flavoring. Shoyu and miso are most often used to finish off the dish, which is why they are added at the end of cooking or towards the end. Most Japanese recipes are written in this order, so you can't mess it up (well, most of the time anyway).

The Japanese are always coming up with innovative ways of shortening things in order to remember them so I think this is why they came up with this.

For dinner tonight, I made Tori no sappari ni (lightly simmered chicken), I've made this in the past and it is a fast, easy dinner.

I've been using an usukuchi-shoyu (light soy sauce) and it is really light, so my chicken came out kind of pale in color, not like this photo.

sa-shi-su-se-so..Happy Cooking!

urusai!

Morinaga's Renaissance is an amaretti cookie with a creamy milk chocolate covering, followed by cashew nuts and a semi-dark chocolate coating. They are individually wrapped so they are perfect for sharing :)

Remember the Kit Kat I posted about? I was surprised that they wrap them so that you can eat only half at a time...although I didn't...

It is election season here in Japan (didn't they just have one??) Anyway, this guy in the Minshutou (social liberal party) decided to roam around and speak through the speaker atop his car, using the surrounding building to bounce his speech off of, at the peak of Kat's nap time! (He was lucky he was INSIDE the car!)

The definition of urusai given by Sanseido's online dictionary is annoying, troublesome, tiresome. And if you use it in a sentence as in, Urusai! it means "shut up", "leave me alone" and "what a nuisance"! That would sum up my feelings....